Because of the costs
of transporting students away from neighborhood schools, won't systems of
educational choice be more expensive than current systems?

A
system of educational choice need not cost more than current educational
systems, and might cost less. Transportation only raises costs significantly if
the supply of schools is restricted to public schools as they are now
constituted. If the supply of schools is allowed to respond to demand, the
supply is likely to expand, with relatively small numbers of large comprehensive
schools being replaced by larger numbers of small, specialized schools. This
expansion could easily occur without the construction or acquisition of new
facilities if several schools shared a building. "Schools within a school," as
this concept is usually known, were used to more than double the number of
schools in East Harlem's choice system. But however the supply expanded,
students would find a significant number of choices within a distance that is
now served by the transportation arrangements of public education systems.

Of
course, if the supply of schools were not expanded, transportation would cost
more, and either taxpayers or parents would have to pay for it. But these costs
might not prove to be onerous, for they could be offset by administrative
savings in operating a decentralized system. There is every reason to believe
that the administrative structure of a public choice system would be less
bureaucratized than today's public school systems, and look more like private
educational systems, where competition compels decentralization and
administrative savings. While the efficiency of a choice system might not reduce
the costs of education substantially – depending on how it is measured,
administration only represents 5-20 percent of the costs of public education –
the savings ought to be enough to offset any increased transportation costs,
which are not now a large part of school budgets either.